Writing Prompt: BILATERAL
Visual inspiration + mental exercise to start your writing week
Love us or leave us, we belong to each other. That hinge is our binding. We ignore it at our peril.
Metaphortography Prompts are free visual and verbal writing prompts for inspiration and reflection. This is the Monday section of Aimee Liu’s MFA Lore. Our Wednesday section is Writer In The World, a curated collection of essays on the writing life by acclaimed MFA faculty and alumni. Writers in Conversation and other MFA Core essays on the craft and business of creative writing will drop each Saturday. Receive some or all of these newsletters by subscribing now:
Our home is split in two, this nation, this world, I mean. More than two —of course, countless fissures and differences divide us, always have —but now more than ever, our home feels bilateral. Two-sided, hinged in the middle, both edges pulling relentlessly apart. Pretending to have nothing in common, like night and day, yet sharing so, so much still and always. The same light warming the windows, the same old floors, the same craving for comfort, the same lonely pangs of solitude when everyone known is gone.
The same stubborn habit of opposition to the illusion of Other. Love us or leave us, we belong to each other. That hinge is our binding. We ignore it at our peril.
Bilateral: Since the prefix bi- means "two" in Latin, bilateral means essentially "two-sided"
affecting reciprocally two nations or parties
having two sides
of, relating to, or affecting the right and left sides of the body or the right and left members of paired organs
having bilateral symmetry
Here is your writing prompt:
As you contemplate the image above, consider the parts of your life that are bilateral. Inside you (your heart?). In your relationships (parents?) or occupation (partnership?). In the physical space you inhabit. In a beloved or necessary object that helps and/or hinders you. In our political nightmare.
Select one of these, and write about its two sides and the implications of this duality. Consider:
What is the whole that’s formed by the two sides?
How do the two sides resemble each other?
In what ways do they need each other?
How do they differ?
What divides them?
What joins them?
How do they interact?
How do they affect each other’s movements, identity, agency?
What purpose is served by the separation of these two sides?
How would each side change if the boundary between them dissolved?
What might dissolve that boundary?
What would happen to the integrity of the whole if that internal boundary dissolved?
What else would be lost?
What else would be gained?
How might the two sides better work together across the boundary, without dissolving it?
Why don’t they do that?
SAVE THESE DATES!
Monday, February 9, 2026, at 10am PT/ 2pm ET
Writers In The World, Live: Create to Survive
Please join WITW’s Substack Live MFA faculty reunion, as Elena Georgiou, Sherri L. Smith and Aimee Liu discuss the essential role of creativity as an engine for solace, hope, and resilience in today’s tormented world.
Elena Georgiou is the award-winning poet and fiction writer who formerly directed Goddard’s MFA in Creative Writing Program and currently teaches in the PhD program at the Rubenstein School at the University of Vermont. Sherri L. Smith is an award-winning author of fiction, nonfiction, and graphic novels for young adults and kids, and a faculty member of Hamline University’s MFA in Children’s Writing. Aimee Liu , the bestselling author of four novels and numerous books of nonfiction, helms the substack MFA Lore.
Tuesday, February 10, 2026, at 11am PT/ 2pm ET
Well Published, Live: Publication via Contests
Tune in to MFA Lore’s Well Published! Substack Live series with hot new authors and industry professionals about the truths and tricks of getting… well published!
On Feb. 10, I’ll be chatting with Toni Ann Johnson , who’s won FOUR writing contests that led to publication of her books. Her next is a story collection, But Where’s Home, to be released on February 10 by Screen Door Press, an imprint of The University Press of Kentucky. Join us to find out how she did it!
Wednesday, February 18, 2026, at 6:30 pm PT
Telling Family Secrets Author Panel
Loreates’ Corner
I’m delighted to introduce you to a few of the wonderful stacks by writers in our community. Please read, subscribe, and share! And if you’re an MFA Lore subscriber with a great stack that I haven’t mentioned, please drop the link in a comment, so I can add you to our Corner.
Sara Somers writes Out My Window :
Kat Albrecht writes Kat Albrecht [Companion Animal World]:
https://substack.com/@companionanimalworld [Apologies, Kat, Substack won’t cooperate!]
Jillian Barnet writes It Takes A Village :
Jillian Barnett is a great writer & great friend so of course she’s a Loreate. Happy so see her Stack profiled here 💗
Right now, I’m writing my own book, so these are totally useful to me. Thank you!❤️